IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0313311.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Gender gap in faculty promotion

Author

Listed:
  • Agata Czech
  • Marcelo Olarreaga
  • Olivia Peila

Abstract

We examine the gender gap in faculty promotion at the University of Geneva. After building a new measure of research quality that has no gender bias (i.e. men and women have, on average, the same level of research quality after we control for disciplines), we find that conditional on research quality, discipline and place where the PhD was obtained, women are 11 percent less likely to get promoted. The gender gap is almost three times larger for promotion from assistant to associate professor, suggesting that the mechanism at play is stronger for junior faculty. The gender gap is explained by the fact that an equal increase in research quality leads to a smaller increase in women’s probability of promotion.

Suggested Citation

  • Agata Czech & Marcelo Olarreaga & Olivia Peila, 2024. "Gender gap in faculty promotion," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 19(11), pages 1-12, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0313311
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0313311
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0313311
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0313311&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0313311?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Heather Sarsons & Klarita Gërxhani & Ernesto Reuben & Arthur Schram, 2021. "Gender Differences in Recognition for Group Work," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 129(1), pages 101-147.
    2. Francine D. Blau & Lawrence M. Kahn, 2017. "The Gender Wage Gap: Extent, Trends, and Explanations," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 55(3), pages 789-865, September.
    3. Veronesi, Pietro & Siniscalchi, Marciano, 2020. "Self-image Bias and Lost Talent," CEPR Discussion Papers 15621, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    4. Nicole Fortin & Thomas Lemieux & Marit Rehavi, 2021. "Gender Differences in Fields of Specialization and Placement Outcomes among PhDs in Economics," AEA Papers and Proceedings, American Economic Association, vol. 111, pages 74-79, May.
    5. Cruz-Castro, Laura & Sanz-Menendez, Luis, 2021. "What should be rewarded? Gender and evaluation criteria for tenure and promotion," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 15(3).
    6. Manuel Bagues & Mauro Sylos-Labini & Natalia Zinovyeva, 2017. "Does the Gender Composition of Scientific Committees Matter?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(4), pages 1207-1238, April.
    7. Erin Hengel, 2022. "Publishing While Female: are Women Held to Higher Standards? Evidence from Peer Review," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 132(648), pages 2951-2991.
    8. Markus Eberhardt & Giovanni Facchini & Valeria Rueda, 2023. "Gender Differences in Reference Letters: Evidence from the Economics Job Market," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 133(655), pages 2676-2708.
    9. Linda Babcock & Maria P. Recalde & Lise Vesterlund & Laurie Weingart, 2017. "Gender Differences in Accepting and Receiving Requests for Tasks with Low Promotability," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(3), pages 714-747, March.
    10. Koffi, Marlene, 2021. "Innovative ideas and gender inequality," CLEF Working Paper Series 35, Canadian Labour Economics Forum (CLEF), University of Waterloo.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Baltrunaite, Audinga & Casarico, Alessandra & Rizzica, Lucia, 2022. "Women in economics: the role of gendered references at entry in the profession," CEPR Discussion Papers 17474, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    2. Judit Vall-Castello & Lídia Farré, 2025. "Promoting Female Talent in Science: Evidence from an Affirmative Action Policy," Working Papers 1478, Barcelona School of Economics.
    3. Biermann, Marcus, 2024. "Remote talks: Changes to economics seminars during COVID-19," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 163(C).
    4. Bosworth, Steven J. & Della Giusta, Marina, 2024. "When Matthew Met Larry: Explaining the Persistence of Gender Underrepresentation in High Status Organizations," IZA Discussion Papers 17460, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    5. Jonas Radbruch & Amelie Schiprowski, 2023. "Committee Deliberation and Gender Differences in Influences," Rationality and Competition Discussion Paper Series 398, CRC TRR 190 Rationality and Competition.
    6. Kai Barron & Ruth Ditlmann & Stefan Gehrig & Sebastian Schweighofer-Kodritsch, 2025. "Explicit and Implicit Belief-Based Gender Discrimination: A Hiring Experiment," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 71(2), pages 1600-1622, February.
    7. Deepa Dhume Datta & Nitzan Tzur-Ilan, 2024. "Gender Gaps in the Federal Reserve System," Working Papers 2417, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
    8. Karen Mumford & Cristina Sechel, 2020. "Pay and Job Rank among Academic Economists in the UK: Is Gender Relevant?," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 58(1), pages 82-113, March.
    9. Joanna Tyrowicz & Lucas Augusto van der Velde & Magdalena Smyk, 2024. "Gender-neutral hiring of junior scholars," GRAPE Working Papers 94, GRAPE Group for Research in Applied Economics.
    10. Abramitzky, Ran & Greska, Lena & Pérez, Santiago & Price, Joseph & Schwarz, Carlo & Waldinger, Fabian, 2024. "Climbing the Ivory Tower: How Socio-Economic Background Shapes Academia," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 739, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    11. Bateman, Victoria & Hengel, Erin, 2023. "The gender gap in UK academic economics 1996-2018: progress, stagnation and retreat," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 118205, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    12. Catherine Eckel & Lata Gangadharan & Philip J. Grossman & Nina Xue, 2021. "The gender leadership gap: insights from experiments," Chapters, in: Ananish Chaudhuri (ed.), A Research Agenda for Experimental Economics, chapter 7, pages 137-162, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    13. Achim Ahrens & Christian B. Hansen & Mark E. Schaffer & Thomas Wiemann, 2025. "Model Averaging and Double Machine Learning," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 40(3), pages 249-269, April.
    14. Singhal, Karan & Sierminska, Eva, 2024. "Inequality in the Economics Profession," IZA Discussion Papers 17584, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    15. Salvanes, Kjell G & Johnsen, Julian Vedeler & Ku, Hyejin, 2020. "Competition and Career Advancement: The Hidden Costs of Paid Leave," CEPR Discussion Papers 15157, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    16. Gamage, Danula K. & Sevilla, Almudena & Smith, Sarah, 2020. "Women in Economics: A UK Perspective," IZA Discussion Papers 13477, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    17. Sangeeta Bansal & Brinda Viswanathan & J. V. Meenakshi, 2023. "Does research performance explain the “leaky pipeline” in Indian academia? A study of agricultural and applied economics," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 54(2), pages 274-288, March.
    18. Antonio Cabrales & Lorenzo Ductor & Ericka Rascon-Ramirez & Ismael Rodriguez-Lara, 2025. "Gender Stereotypes and Homophily in Team Formation," Working Papers DTE 648, CIDE, División de Economía.
    19. Gauri Kartini Shastry & Olga Shurchkov, 2024. "Reject or revise: Gender differences in persistence and publishing in economics," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 62(3), pages 933-956, July.
    20. Babin, J. Jobu & Hussey, Andrew, 2023. "Gender penalties and solidarity — Teaching evaluation differentials in and out of STEM," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 226(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0313311. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.